Age, Biography and Wiki

Karl Benjamin was born on 29 December, 1925 in Chicago, is an American painter (1925 - 2012). Discover Karl Benjamin's Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. Learn How rich is he in this year and how he spends money? Also learn how he earned most of networth at the age of 86 years old?

Popular As N/A
Occupation N/A
Age 86 years old
Zodiac Sign Capricorn
Born 29 December, 1925
Birthday 29 December
Birthplace Chicago
Date of death 26 July, 2012
Died Place N/A
Nationality American

We recommend you to check the complete list of Famous People born on 29 December. He is a member of famous painter with the age 86 years old group.

Karl Benjamin Height, Weight & Measurements

At 86 years old, Karl Benjamin height not available right now. We will update Karl Benjamin's Height, weight, Body Measurements, Eye Color, Hair Color, Shoe & Dress size soon as possible.

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Who Is Karl Benjamin's Wife?

His wife is Beverly Jean Paschke

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Wife Beverly Jean Paschke
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Karl Benjamin Net Worth

His net worth has been growing significantly in 2023-2024. So, how much is Karl Benjamin worth at the age of 86 years old? Karl Benjamin’s income source is mostly from being a successful painter. He is from American. We have estimated Karl Benjamin's net worth, money, salary, income, and assets.

Net Worth in 2024 $1 Million - $5 Million
Salary in 2024 Under Review
Net Worth in 2023 Pending
Salary in 2023 Under Review
House Not Available
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Source of Income painter

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Timeline

1925

Karl Stanley Benjamin (December 29, 1925 – July 26, 2012 ) was an American painter of vibrant geometric abstractions, who rose to fame in 1959 as one of four Los Angeles–based Abstract Classicists and subsequently produced a critically acclaimed body of work that explores a vast array of color relationships.

Working quietly at his home in Claremont, CA, he developed a rich vocabulary of colors and hard-edge shapes in masterful compositions of tightly balanced repose or high-spirited energy.

At once intuitive and systematic, the artist was, in the words of critic Christopher Knight, "a colorist of great wit and inventiveness."

Benjamin was born in Chicago in 1925.

1943

He enrolled at Northwestern University in 1943, but dropped out to join the U.S. Navy during World War II.

1946

In 1946, after three years of military service, he moved to California to study English literature, history, and philosophy at the University of Redlands with the help of the G.I. Bill.

1949

He received a B.A. degree and California teaching credentials in 1949.

With no formal education in art and no thought of becoming an artist, Benjamin married Beverly Jean Paschke, and began teaching in an elementary school in Bloomington, California, in 1949.

1952

He started a family (daughters Beth Marie and Kris Ellen and son Bruce Lincoln), moved to Claremont in 1952, and subsequently taught in Chino for the next 30 years.

Benjamin's interest in art emerged serendipitously.

Asked to develop art lessons for his students' curriculum, he began working with crayons and became fascinated with the phenomenon of how colors can appear to change when juxtaposed with others.

1954

In 1954, he had his first major solo show, at the Pasadena Art Museum, now the Norton Simon Museum of Art.

Benjamin had early success in Southern California, showing his work in museums and community galleries, but the event that put his work under a national spotlight and gave him a lasting label was "Four Abstract Classicists".

1959

Also featuring the work of Lorser Feitelson, John McLaughlin and Frederick Hammersley, the 1959–60 exhibition was viewed as Los Angeles' answer to Abstract Expressionism.

The West Coast artists' crisp abstractions offered a bracingly cool alternative to New York's emotion and action-packed style.

The exhibition was organized by critic Jules Langsner, and opened at the San Francisco Museum of Art, (now the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) then traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum at Exposition Park (now the Los Angeles County Museum of Art).

Renamed "West Coast Hard-Edge," the revised version later traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Art in London and Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

In the exhibition catalog, Langsner described Abstract Classicist painting as "Hard-edge painting" in which "color and shape are one and the same entity. Form gains its existence through color, and color its being through form."

Of Benjamin's work, he wrote: "The elongated forms in the Karl Benjamin paintings interlock in a continuous composition that seems to be without beginning or end. Whenever one of these zigzag shapes appears to overlap an adjacent zigzag, it tucks itself back in somewhere else."

1960

Eager to learn more, he took classes at the Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University) and received an M.A. degree in 1960.

By then, he was a serious painter and color was his subject matter.

1969

Multi Triangles (Untitled # 26) from 1969, in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art, demonstrates the artist's hard-edge painting style applied to strict geometric abstraction.

1974

"Four Abstract Classicists reveals, in retrospect, not merely four senior moderns who reduced their painting to precise, flat profundities, but a current of sensibility in the esthetic climate of Los Angeles," critic Peter Plagens wrote in 1974.

As he saw it, the hard-edge style rose from Los Angeles' "desert air, youthful cleanliness, spatial expanse, architectural tradition" and an optimistic belief in a refined, spiritually charged art that could fulfill human needs for visual and intellectual pleasure.

1977

Benjamin continued teaching in public elementary and middle schools until 1977, balancing his time in the classroom with work in his studio.

1979

He had a second teaching career from 1979 to 1994, when he was a professor and artist-in-residence at Pomona College in Claremont and taught classes at the Claremont Graduate School.

1983

He won National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1983 and 1989.

Like many artists with long careers, Benjamin was often overlooked in his later years, but he re-emerged with a burst of exhibitions and critical acclaim.

2004

Louis Stern Fine Arts presented exhibitions of his paintings in 2004, 2005, 2007, and 2011, and posthumously in 2014, 2017, and 2019.

2007

The Claremont Museum of Art launched its exhibition program in 2007 with a 42-year survey of his work.

Benjamin also had a prominent place in "Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design and Culture at Mid-Century," a 2007-09 national traveling show organized by the Orange County Museum of Art.

Dave Hickey wrote in the catalog, for Benjamin's 2007 exhibition at Louis Stern:

"I can think of no other artist whose paintings exude the joy and pleasure of being an artist with more intensity than Karl Benjamin's nor any other artist whose long teaching career has left no blemish of cynicism on his practice."

Shortly before Benjamin's death, artist David P. Flores planned a large portrait mural for the City of Pomona with Benjamin's approval.

2012

The 140' x 40' mural was completed shortly thereafter in 2012.